Dec 12, 2008  |  By: REBECCA ARMENDARIZ  | COMMENTS     

There’s no shortage of gays in Tim Gunn’s workplace. As chief creative officer for Liz Claiborne, the style guru and “Project Runway” host flourishes as an out gay man.

But things weren’t always that easy, which led to Gunn’s involvement with D.C. based organization Out for Work, a nonprofit that aims to educate, prepare and empower queer college students as they transition from academia to the workplace. The group’s endeavors include an annual national career conference and presentations at Pride events.

Gunn says he became involved with Out for Work because young gays need to feel supported when beginning their careers.

“They need to feel that they can be who they are in the workplace,” he says.

Gunn, 55, didn’t reach personal acceptance of his own sexual orientation until his mid-20s.

“I never thought I was heterosexual. I knew what I wasn’t, but I wasn’t sure what I was,” he says.

Gunn resisted his attraction to other men until after graduating from the Corcoran College of Art and Design, and said he wasn’t really “out out, in all capital letters” until more recently.

“Upon reflection, it was an awful way to be,” he says in an exclusive interview with the Blade.

“I certainly knew who I was and did what I wanted and conducted my life in the way that I felt necessary and appropriate, but I never needed to talk about it,” he says.

The struggle with his sexual orientation stemmed from the lack of positive gay mentors or idols in his earlier life.

“I struggled, for instance, with how gay men were portrayed in movies. They’re either foppish jokes or they’re deviants. It was sort of like, well, I’m not a foppish joke — yet — and I don’t think I’m a deviant, so how do I even fit into this?” he says.

He’s since learned there are other options.

“I lead what I consider to be a very normal, responsible, great life — and I’m gay.”

Gunn sees himself as a role model for gay youth, the kind that was missing throughout his young adulthood.

“One of the wonderful things about having a public persona is being able to be, at least I hope, a positive role model for young people and someone to whom people can look and say, ‘Tim Gunn is gay. How bad could this be?’” 

Gunn’s comfort in his own skin has allowed him to take on an activist role. He starred in a public service announcement denouncing California’s Proposition 8 (which banned same-sex marriage there) and said that while he is devastated by its passage, he thinks the gay rights movement needs to focus on getting the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) passed first.

“By comparison, Proposition 8 is like, gee folks, until we get ENDA passed, let’s not even go there,” he says. “How can we elect Barack Obama, which thrills me to no end … and then still have 30 states in which you can get fired for being gay? I use that statistic all the time because people are absolutely stunned by it.”

As for the fate of Bravo reality design contest “Project Runway,” Gunn said he has no idea what to expect.

The legal challenges over the popular television show involve lawsuits between the Weinstein Company, which produces the series, and NBC Universal, Bravo’s parent company. Earlier this year, the Weinstein Company sold the rights to the series to Lifetime Networks. Lifetime recently filed a countersuit seeking exclusive rights to the show.

“We have this horrible, nasty court case. We have an angry Bravo/NBC. We have an angry Lifetime. We have, I’m sure, an angry Weinstein Company,” Gunn says. “We have Heidi [Klum] and I despondent about the whole thing. We worry that season six will never be seen by anyone.”

Gunn will appear tonight at Out for Work’s holiday fundraiser at Halo, (1435 P St. N.W.), from 6 to 8 p.m. Advance tickets must be purchased and are available through outforwork.com.